Mobile devices or devices, such as but not limited to personal data appliances, cellular phones, radios, pagers, lap top computers, and the like are required to operate for relatively long periods before being recharged. These mobile devices usually include one or more processors as well as multiple memory modules and other peripheral devices.
In order to reduce the power consumption of mobile devices various power consumption control techniques were suggested. Differential voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) reduces the power consumption of a component such as a processor by altering the supply voltage that is supplied to the processor as well as altering the frequency of a clock signal that is provided to the processor. The alteration is responsive to the computational load demands (also referred to as throughput) of the processor. Higher supply voltage levels are associated with higher operating frequencies and higher computational loads but are also associated with higher energy consumption.
When applying DVFS the level of the supply voltage should be set in response to fast voltage drops, static voltage drops, inaccuracies of a supply voltage provider (and especially a supply voltage regulator) and other factors. A fast voltage drop can happen when the computational load on the processor increases.
Accordingly, the supply voltage is higher (by a large margin) than a supply voltage that could have been provided to the processor if the mentioned factors were addressed.